I spend about 550 per month for a family of 5 (2 teenaged boys) in Canada. I decided to try budgeting for groceries a couple of years ago and it helps keep me on track. When I see I'm getting close to my budget I try not to delay going to the grocery store until necessary. I buy in bulk when on sale, realized that I don't need to have fancy meals every day, you can make inexpensive swaps (beans for meat or bulk up meat with beans & rice so more filling), make my own bread (a loaf of bread here can cost $4), buy generic for some things & started watching KZfaq to get ideas for inexpensive meals. We eat fresh produce and I make sure I rarely throw anything out --you'd be surprised how many items can be chopped up and frozen for later!

In the words of Dave Ramsey… “rice and beans beans and rice… you don’t see the inside of a restaurant unless you work there”🤣🤣🤣he is the best!

Most coupons are for processed food

The 3 things that saved our grocery budget are location, meal planning, and a list. We made the switch to Aldi and saw a significant reduction in cost, and the few things that Aldi doesn't sell, we pick up at Walmart. Meal planning has been a game changer. It has eliminated food waste almost competely - it is very rare that we throw any food products away. Meal planning also relieves the stress of figuring out what to make for dinner at the end of a long day. I use a grocery list app to make my grocery list for shopping. The app stores all of our staples and prices, so I only buy what we need. This also helps to eliminate food waste. We are a family of 3 and we spend $175-200 on groceries every 2 weeks, including household items.

We intentionally spend more on food because our food supply is absolutely disease inducing

The best kept secret: Aldi's. The difference is ridiculous. Also, keep your refrigerator up to date. Throw out the bad stuff and move stuff that is aging to the front to remind you to use it. People throw away tons of food / dollars by letting it go bad, and mostly that is because they forgot about it. It was in clutter and pushed back in the refrigerator. Base your meal planner on what is aging out and not what you scheduled for, say, Wednesday.

For a couple, if you buy meat on sale at a good price, and use Aldi you can eat on $80- $100 a week. So that's 320-400 during a four week month. $400-$500 for a five week month.

Cooking at home is still way cheaper than eating out regardless of how much grocery prices has skyrocketed. One tip is to avoid doing grocery shopping at places like Costco or Sam’s unless you have a large family. Otherwise, buying groceries in bulk tend to make you overeat and/or waste food.

I spend $400-500 month for a family of 4. Sometimes it’s lower around $300 but then the next month is usually closer to $500

We are doing pretty good! I am happy to see that our budgeted amount is less than the average.

Get the weekly shopping adds for your local grocery stores. By meat that’s on sale and put it in the freezer. Buy fruits and vegetables that are on sale.

As an average person who works a 9 to 5 job. I still feel poor when I budget

Id rather buy organic and high quality food at sprouts/whole foods or farmers market. Single guy runs me about $1000 a month but its an investment in my health. No car payment no debt and i max my retire account

Switching to shopping at Aldi has helped my food budget a lot

My weekly budget for 2 is $65 weekly. YES! It can be done. I am not a food snob. We eat well and healthy. About every 5-6 weeks there are staples I have to purchase. That week it will be around $100. I also am a coupon fanatic. I match them up with grocery store sale. My menu is based on what deals I can find. I also enjoy fuel point from Kroger when I buy items that are the best deals of the week. I spend 2 hours every Wednesday going through coupons and grocery ads. Kroger..Aldi..Walmart. We are debt free and live on a $2100 monthly budget.

Another tip is buy a food saver type machine so you can buy meat on sale or in bulk and freeze for future. The are several less expensive brands at Amazon.

Hmm, waste is a big one. If we throw the leftovers away, let them go bad or forget to freeze, there’s no point in trying to cut down spending because we just flushed money down the drain.

I find if I stay away from junk food and pop. I can buy double the food. Including lots of fruit and veggies.. otherwise my i can barely buy anything before my groceries money runs out.

Very good content. Really need to apply some of your suggestions. Ty for sharing. Enjoyed it.

Great video, thanks Rachel.

I don't eat out unless I've budgeted for it. That said, my "grocery" budget includes household items such as tp, laundry detergent, soap (I've gone back to bar soap), food prep containers etc.

We are a family of 6 and we shop at Costco a lot, when I go to Walmart or Aldi the prices are shocking to me for what you get. We usually get the orange chicken at Costco as an easy freezer meal option and at Aldi a small bag that wouldn’t feed our whole family was 8 dollars. When at Costco it’s about 15-18 dollars and we end up using it for 3-4 meals before it’s gone. We add rice and veggies. We do usually purchase it when it’s on sale. I always grab my easy freezer options when they are on sale at Costco, that helps me not be tempted to order pizza on a particularly stressful day and it gives us variety based on sales cycles.

We spend about $1100 monthly for food sometimes more when we need to buy toiletries.

Using inventory in the house and meal planning for every week or two at a time really helps control the budget.

$50 a week is doable if you have an Aldi and a place to find good meat deals. Stock up on meat when they are at a low price. Watch sales and that's when to get things to stock up for later. Keep frig and freezer straightened so you knownehat you need. Keepung meat in baskets in the freezer really helps us to know what we have. Chicken in one basket etc. Keeping it organized is what helps.

Meal Planning!!!!

Does anyone really know exactly how much they spend on groceries? Are groceries just food? When my wife and I go grocery shopping, we are also buying toilet paper, laundry detergent, trash bags, etc. Do these count as groceries? We lump these items into the grocery category. Not sure if others do. Just wondering.

I stopped ordering takeout and eating at restaurants for almost a year now. I shop at Aldi for groceries. Total game changer. Also use the airfryer pretty often for easy weekday meals.

I think I do pretty well. I spend $140 a week for a family of 4 and I have a home daycare I feed too.

Family of 4(just increased to 5) and I have been spending $400-$500/mo(some months even less)5. I am hopeful that our new house member(teenage boy)doesn’t raise our grocery bill up by much so we will see.

As a family of four, we budget about $600 a month on groceries. We’ve found that doing grocery pickup has actually saved us a lot of money, because we can add everything on our list and compare prices on the app. Plus, we can see where we stand on our budget and take things off the order if we’ve gone over. We also place the order through an app like Ibotta and get a percentage back with each order. It’s been really beneficial for our family.

I spend around $50 or less on weekly groceries. I don't throw away food. Sure if its bad. But how i plan my meals are overlapping ingredients & buy bulk i can reasonably go through before the expiration. Like milk. I don't use a lot of milk so buying a gallon just is wasteful for me. I save around $1-2 by purchasing a size closer to what i expect to use. Or.. lets say i make hamburgers. Ill probably have extra buns. So next week ill buy ham or chicken & make chicken sandwiches. This may lead to having left over ham that folloing week so ill make omlets. Which leads to extra eggs and ill make maybe pancakes or something. Its this never ending meal plan flow. Creating meals based off of what you have left over. I also... buy ahead for future meals. Maybe i make a pasta dish with meatballs. I'll buy bulk meatballs knowing that weeks groceries may be a bit more. Not a lot more. But also knowing that a future week will be less. Because I don't need to buy the meatballs again for awhile. The next time I use them my groceries will be less than $50. So I add useful non snacks non perishables in my cart. And get myself to about $50. Like maybe I'll load up on pasta. Or frozen peas. Then future weeks should be less because I have those foods already. I also do not buy snacks while grocery shopping. Unless its part of something planned like a party. No sodas. No treats of any kind. Im usually not tempted by impulse buying. But it is just too easy to buy the store when your hungry looking at snacks. So i get those things only on purposeful trips specifically to get a specific snack. This allows me to avoid the temptation to buy more. And i buy only whats on that list. For the most part i don't snack anyway. Snacking is more a sign of boardem or stress. I prefer to address those issue without leaning in food. And get what food you need during meal. I also pre portion food. For two reasons. The primary reason is deit control and health. However it has a side effect of better meal planning & lessing food waste. I do have a garden which does help. But it's not a lot of help. I'm new to gardening so I'm working on having thar garden provide me with more of the food I eat. So right now it's not a substantial factor. But it will eventually be. I do get a lot of food from it. It's just a matter of boosting efficiency & long term storage. As well as.. a lot of the things I get from the garden aren't expensive anyway. I just made spaghetti with garden pasta sauce. It saves around $3. But that's 7 meals for me. So that $3 doesn't add up to much for one person. If I had a family. A 350sqft garden has the potential for substantial savings imo. I also don't like getting ripped off. There's a grocery store chain in my area that is still price gouging chicken. It's litterly about 2x- 3x the price of all the other grocery stores. Not just Walmart which often times sells things below cost. I will not buy chicken there. I do agree that supporting local is highly beneficial. And really that local price gouging store is my preferred place to shop. But when local businesses price gouge. I will not buy from you under any circumstances.

Some ideas too. Well, there aren’t always many coupons for good foods. There are almost always coupons for basic needs such as toothpaste, detergents shampoo, etc. saving money. There also allows more income for food.

1. Have a list 2. Aldi's Aldi Aldi's 3. Shop the sales 4 check the coupon booth. 5. Buy in season produce. 6. Support your local butcher, baker..

Also where’s the grocery savings link? I don’t see in the description!

I loved budgeting. I started my budget on every dollar in January unfortunately the app stopped opening in the last 2 weeks😏

I get $1779 a month social security retirement I don't have a house payment or car note My weekly grocery "budget " is $35 Eating out is taking my beans and rice out of the kitchen into the den and watching a movie from the $5 bin at walmart

Rachel do you suggest investing in an index fund like AMC?

Hey everyone! Rachel is correct, food prices are at an all time high. Shop at Green grocers directly, they buy direct from farmers (and sometimes it's farmers at the stalls) and they don't have the insane mark-ups of supermarkets. Go to a butcher directly for your meats, same principle, no supermarket mark-ups which could easily save you 20% If you have the space and time, learning to grow your own food (even if its only a small portion) could be the wallet lifesaver you've needed.

I only buy protein during gardening season. Eat 1 ingredient foods

Our take home pay is around 4200€. We pay 600-650€ per month on groceries with a family of 4 and we shop at Lidl or Aldi.

A lot of it depends on where you shop & the brand you purchase. We have a Winco nearby and they have, by far, the best overall prices, so we get 95% of our food there. And unless it’s a treat with something specific to a certain brand, I NEVER buy brand products. Shop sales, clearance, discount, make meals that stretch. We are a family of 5 in southern Nevada (expensive) and we stay under $500/month.

My husband ( age 79) and I (age 73) prioritize homecooked, nutrient rich organic foods. We DO NOT eat processed foods, fast foods etc. as they are unhealthy. We do not eat out. We are currently spending $1,600 per month for organic, GMO free foods that we cook at home. We do not eat foods that are inflammatory (peppers, white potatoes, cows dairy, sugar, gluten.) I believe that we pay now for organic healthy foods, OR we pay later in ill health, doctors bills, surgeries, medication and lost work days etc.

I don’t see a link to the “grocery savings guide”

I wish we had gone more into the meals she fed her family!

I spend $$$ at the grocery. I cook from scratch and I am choosy about the meat, olive oil, veggies, fruits - it costs to buy the real food. We buy very little processed food and stay away from carbs. Agree about grocery store but it's over crowded and stressful just to park!!

We had two birthday parties last month. It's easily our most expensive month in food for our family of 6. We spent less than $650 that month. We normally spend just over $400 a month. Meal plan and shop at Aldi and other money-saving stores. I can't imagine how people spend nearly 3 times what we do despite having fewer children. I feel like we eat a crazy amount and don't do a good job at planning cheap meals either, so I'm always annoyed when I go to "save money on groceries" to find out their starting point is at least twice what we spend.

We, a couple. Spend between 10% and 12% percent on groceries, including everything for kitchen and bathroom...and sodas.

Any thoughts on buying food at Walmart? Their prices seem to be low but I don't know much about how the quality compares

Plant a fruits and veggies garden, go fishing, dig a well for water.

Have not eaten out in 3 years... never will again..

Just my wife and I and we only spend $600 a month or less

I give blood regularly, and often roll the donation gift card ($70 per donation) back into the grocery/household items budget by picking up Walmart gift cards. The other day, and trying to buy high quality paper products in bulk, I used a $70 gift card to get the largest pack of Charmin Ultra, and the largest pack of Bounty Paper towels I could buy. $70... just covered it! Might have to start buying cheaper TP! ...Geesh!

I do gardening last 10 years ,yes is time consumption but i liked .To cut cost i grow plants from seed .Compost i get it from compost facility for free.Can eat fresh vegetables from garden all season. Cost me very little .Save money live better 😂😂😂

1. data who cares how i compare? i'm not eating for a village, i'm eating for me.

Grow some food, its fun and money saving. It is a great hobby that gets you out doors and produces yummy food and saves you money.

I think George Kamel should do one of these for gluten and dairy free lifestyle and with a baby on formula if his baby girl was ever on formula. I wasn’t able to breastfeed very long and this is our second baby. We go through a can of formula a week at $40 a pop 😵‍💫 we’re also in PA which I think is one of the higher states for grocery taxes.

Thankfully I live alone and i use leftovers to my advantage and i shop some groceries at Wal-Mart and dollar tree 🌳 (dollar tree is getting named brand foods, they're stepping up their game)

Everything I buy at the grocery store is groceries/household because… who’s got time to separate that out. Not I. Especially because it makes no difference in your spending whether you split the category or not 😂. So our household items spending is about $600 for 2. And this includes cat food, litter, groceries, everything I get on Amazon for the household. But we raise our own protein so it would be probably $800 without that.

I don't budget for groceries. I am frugal in every category besides this one. It's an investment in health! Most supermarket food is trying to poison us unless you search hard for healthy sources

I was reliably informed by her father that the president and economy doesn't matter. Also informed that if you have a budget you are just fine. So idk what she is talking about. /sarcasm.

This is possible I had 50 to feed family of three for a week and I made it work eggs breakfast I made taco soup for 3 days meal potatoes soup smoothies for snacks spaghetti it is possible to budget to get out of a bind then one week eat better or weekend meals a lot nicer

Cook vegetable soups and have it with 2nd course at lunch. Very inexpensive and tasty. Have pastas with homemade sauces, heck you can have them with garilc and olive oil alone. Home made pasta sauces are dirt cheap to make. Buy less prepacked foods. Plan meals and buy only those ingredients. Dont throw anything out. Leave out silly things as juices, sodas, cookies, chicolates. Can make sweets at home with less money and less additives. I guess some intermetent fasting wont hurt either, can work on that body while at it 😅

beans and rice aren't just for the ramsey gazelle approach. if u r a single like me, sam's club tilapia in the the micro every few days is a game changer. eating healthy and simple ain't hard.

Rachel Cruze & others, where do you buy your meat? That is what my biggest issue is. I buy lean ground beef and boneless, skinless chicken thighs. Both Walmart and Aldi package their meats in a package with air or gas of some kind instead of meat wrapped tight. I was taught a long time ago that it wasn't a good way to buy meat. Advice?

Family of 5 (3 littles) in Canada. There's no way I can get a weekly grocery bill that low. I cook from scratch (even making my own yogurt for several months now since the price for plain old yogurt is insane) and have been doing all of the things listed for years. When prices for things are too high, we just don't buy them and see about going without that week or month. Even in a big city, we have limited places to buy groceries and they're all increasing prices on items by up to a dollar the next week. We don't usually try to shop at several different places because then you're just paying more in gas and time.

My parents save on groceries by growing their own vegetables in their backyard. It cuts down what they buy in the produce department.

Frugal fit mom on youtube is a good place to go tu have ideas How to save on groceries

The cost of non food items like soap, garbage bags, etc are not helping.

problem is when already buying on the lowest end and still running a near $100/wk on basics, theirs no room/way to cut costs further, and if basics exceed the budget, what then? (besides skipping meals altogether)

People buy junk food that’s why pay so much I joking to save money on food eat less food 😜 no just learn to cook and don’t go to restaurants and don’t buy junk food.

We budget 1100 a month for a family of six

HEB store brand products are legit.

Do you include toiletries in the grocery budget?

Family of 4 we spend roughly around $700-800 a month for groceries. Seems reasonable to me.

I have 2 teenage boys and I find it quite hard to get away with just spending $100 a week on just groceries.

479 per month?? I save and spend almost 800 for 3 ppl

Just cut out breakfast, it's one less meal to buy items for.

We slashed our grocery spending by not going out to eat anymore, instead of a $25 dollar take out pizza, we get Aldi for 7.99, not as good but it's not bad

I find Aldi's is not cheap anymore. The produce is horrible at Aldi. I picked up a head of lettuce over the weekend and it was rotten. This is not the first time that I have seen this. I left and went to Walmart. I have had this experience at a couple of Aldi's in the area. I do buy the generic at Walmart and have found that it is about the same price as Aldi. I am done with Aldi's. If you are getting rotten food from a store it is not cheap. I have sent information to Aldi Corporate, but nothing changes.

Most rich people stay rich by spending like the poor and investing without stopping then most poor people stay poor by spending like the rich yet not investing like the rich but impressing them

Fasting helps. 😂

THE #1 easiest and BEST way for most people to reduce their grocery bills is to eliminate ALL junk food , soda, candy, crackers, fruit juices, and highly processed packaged foods. Just buy REAL FOOD. If you do this you won’t need any of her so-called “tools.” Real foods are mostly around the perimeter aisles.

Boycott high prices.

Don’t take kids with you to the store 😂… but seriously, don’t.

Groseries that do not include toiletry cleaning supplies and detergent…

Trader Joe's is inexpensive?

I don’t see a link for the grocery savings guide

We had to bump up our grocery budget to 700 a month for a family of 5

If I would be alone I would try to find a find a job where I can eat for free. The rest of the time do fasting 👌

Do people actually think Rachel Cruz is budgeting her meals, eating generic? 😂

Does groceries include household items like cleaning supplies, toilet paper, paper towels, etc? If not, where do you recommend putting those types of things in the budget? I struggle with those because I shop at the same store for groceries and household items, so it's often all on the same receipt.

$50 per person I meant to say. Teenagers may need more.

Family of three here we spend around $600 on groceries a month. But we eat out at least once a week as well

honestly, i'm just going to start eating air and dirt. that's free.

Good morning Rachell. Glad to see you are up and adam. You look amazing today.

''RESTURANT/EATING OUT FOOD'' has no place in a cost of groceries video. 'the only time you should be at a restaurant is when you are working there.'' said someone named dave...

Considering a 3rd job just to keep up with all of the rampant "inflation" aka destruction of the purchasing power of the USD.

Guess I need to learn some hunting and fishing skills.

Eat less?